The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern - Review

Wishing everyone a very happy 2012. This is my first review of the year. One of my favorite holiday gifts. And it really is a fabulous book

The night circus arrives without warning. One day it is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

Take two illusionists who have been entered into a competition they know very little about. They are bound to compete but only one can walk away. And their arena is the circus. But Celia and Marco like to think they work together rather than against each other to make the circus ever more fantastic.

But it’s the circus itself that captured me from the start, with its black and white stripes, astounding clock, cloud maze, ice room, and acrobats - a place where the magic is real not an illusion. It travels constantly and we, like the reveurs, simply long to travel with it, wearing a red scarf, utterly besotted.

I lingered over every description, read it as though moving through the tents myself, pondering on the ideas of ability versus effort, and the simple magic of love. Mesmerizing, elegant, dark, and utterly addictive this is one of my favorites of 2011.